September 2006 Volume 18, No. 4(E) Nowhere to Flee The Perilous Situation of Palestinians in Iraq I. Executive Summary .................................................................................................................. 1 II. Recommendations ................................................................................................................... 5 To the Iraqi Authorities, including the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Displacement and Migration................................................................................................... 5 To the United States and the U.S.-led Multinational Forces in Iraq................................. 5 To the Governments of Jordan, Syria, and Other Countries in the Region.................... 5 To the Government of Israel.................................................................................................. 6 To the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees ....................... 6 To Donors and the International Community..................................................................... 6 III. Background: The Palestinian Refugees in Iraq.................................................................. 8 IV. The 2003 War and the Backlash against Iraqi Palestinians............................................ 12 Physical Attacks and Threats ................................................................................................12 Expulsion of Palestinian Families from their Homes .......................................................14 V. 2003 Flight from Iraq and the Jordanian Response ......................................................... 17 Initial Flight and the Establishment of al-Ruwaishid and al-Karama Camps................17 Al-Ruwaishid camp.................................................................................................................18 Al-Karama Camp, 2003-2005 ...............................................................................................20 No Readmittance to the Camps after Return to Baghdad Proves Non-Viable ............22 VI. Renewed Violence against Palestinians............................................................................. 23 The Situation after the Samarra Bombing...........................................................................24 VII. Iraqi Ministry of Interior Registration Requirements and Official Harassment of Palestinians........................................................................................................ 29 Torture and “Disappearances” .............................................................................................29 Onerous Registration Procedures for Palestinian Refugees.............................................30 Safety Concerns with Palestinian Identity Documents.....................................................32 VIII. Closed Borders and Lack of Resettlement Alternatives.............................................. 34 Background: The Protection Gap for Palestinian Refugees.............................................34 The 2006 Jordan Border Issue..............................................................................................38 Syria’s Offer to Take Palestinian Refugees .........................................................................39 IX. Conclusion: The Need for a Regional Solution and International Burden Sharing .......................................................................................................................................... 41 X. Acknowledgements................................................................................................................ 42 I lived in Baghdad for fifty-eight years. This is the first time I ever left. Leaving Iraq is like tearing my roots from Iraq. All of my children were born there. I brought all of them out—my sixteen children and grandchildren. After my wife’s nephew was strangled, we couldn’t go out on the street. It was impossible to live there any longer. I left behind my house, all my furniture. I didn’t leave behind my car because it was already stolen a year ago. We didn’t know where we were going, we just wanted to get out to save ourselves and our children. —Palestinian refugee, Trebil camp on the Iraqi border, April 30, 2006 I. Executive Summary The security of the approximately 34,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq has drastically deteriorated since the fall of the Saddam Hussein government in April 2003. Militant groups, mostly Shi`a, have targeted this predominantly Sunni minority community, attacking their communal buildings, committing several dozen murders, and threatening harm unless they immediately leave Iraq. Amidst the widespread politically motivated and criminal violence in Iraq, Palestinians have been targeted more than other minorities because of resentment of the privileges Palestinians received during Saddam Hussein’s rule, and suspicions that they are supporting the insurgency. The Iraqi government bears considerable responsibility for the plight of the country’s Palestinians. Elements of the Ministry of Interior have been implicated in the arbitrary detention, torture, killing, and “disappearance” of Palestinians. Despite their status as refugees, Iraqi Palestinians have been subjected to new and extremely burdensome registration requirements, providing a venue for bureaucratic hostility. And unlike Iraqi citizens at risk, who are largely able to find refuge abroad, Palestinians have nowhere to flee: countries in the region (with rare, temporary exceptions) have kept their borders firmly closed to fleeing Iraqi Palestinians. And the international community has done little to help ease their plight. Palestinian refugees in Iraq became a target for violence, harassment, and eviction from their homes soon after the Iraqi government fell to U.S.-led forces in 2003. Unknown assailants fired upon Palestinian housing projects with assault weapons and mortar rounds, and threw bombs into Palestinian homes. A particular point of contention had been the government’s provision to Palestinians of subsidized housing, often at the expense of mostly Shi`a landlords who were paid a pittance in rent by the Iraqi government. Immediately after the fall of the Saddam government, Shi`a landlords forcibly evicted their Palestinian tenants. 1 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 18, NO. 4(E) Since then, conditions for Palestinian refugees in Iraq continue to worsen. The February 22, 2006 bombing that destroyed one of Shi`ism’s holiest shrines, al-`Askariyya mosque in Samarra, led to a wave of sectarian killings that continues to date. Alleged Shi`a militants attacked Palestinian housing projects in Baghdad and killed at least ten Palestinians, among them the two brothers of the former Palestinian attaché in Baghdad, who were kidnapped from their father’s home on February 23 and found dead at a morgue two days later, their bodies mutilated. On the evening of the Samarra bombing, unidentified persons murdered Samir Khalid al-Jayyab, a fifty-year-old Palestinian, hitting him over the head with a sword and shooting him some twenty times. On March 16, unidentified armed men strangled to death Muhammad Hussain Sadiq, a twenty- seven-year-old Palestinian barber, together with two Sunni Iraqis in the Shu`la neighborhood of Baghdad. In mid-March, a militant group calling itself the “Judgment Day Brigades” distributed leaflets in Palestinian neighborhoods, accusing the Palestinians of collaborating with the insurgents, and stating, “We warn that we will eliminate you all if you do not leave this area for good within ten days.” The killings and death threats put the Palestinian community in a “state of shock,” according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and led Palestinian National Authority President Mahmud Abbas and the High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres to each call upon Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to intervene to stop the killings of Palestinians. Fear continues to grip Palestinian communities in Baghdad, and thousands more Palestinians in Iraq are eager to leave the country. And the killings continue: UNHCR reported at least six more killings of Iraqi Palestinians in Baghdad and renewed death threats against Iraqi Palestinians in the last two weeks of May. The post-Saddam Iraqi governments have done little to protect the Iraqi Palestinians – a community whose members were given the same rights as citizens, minus the actual citizenship and the right to own property – and some elements within government have actively contributed to this community’s insecurity. Notably, in October 2005 the minister of displacement and migration called on the government to expel all Palestinian refugees to Gaza, accusing Palestinians of involvement in terrorism. Iraqi Palestinians consistently told Human Rights Watch that Ministry of Interior authorities frequently harass and discriminate against Palestinian refugees in Iraq, singling them out for arrest and falsely accusing them of terrorism. One Palestinian who had been detained at the Kut military base southeast of Baghdad for sixty-eight days described torture he believes he suffered simply for being Palestinian: the guards would enter the detention room and ask for “the Palestinian,” and gave him regular beatings and attached live electrodes to his penis. A lawyer for a group of four Palestinians arrested on terrorism charges in May 2005 said his clients had suffered beatings with chains, electric shocks, cigarette burns on HUMAN RIGHTS